


Doubt (Whenever I Let My Guard Down, Whatever I Was Ignoring)

by luninosity



Series: The Epic Universe of Porn, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Trauma, and Love [17]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Commitment, Concerned!Michael, Conversations, Early Mornings, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gingerbread Coffee, Grocery Shopping, Healing, Holding Hands, James Trying Very Hard, Love, M/M, Phone Calls & Telephones, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con References, Routines And Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-29
Updated: 2012-11-29
Packaged: 2017-11-19 20:53:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Breakfast foods, rituals, hands being held, almost-arguments, concern, the first of two phone calls. This was the first part of the <i>next </i>story for quite a long time, but then I decided it worked better on its own as kind of a set-up for those events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doubt (Whenever I Let My Guard Down, Whatever I Was Ignoring)

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing explicit, just slow movement toward getting better, gradually. Five or six more stories, I think? Title this time from Toad The Wet Sprocket’s “Whatever I Fear”: _do we expect these things to change/ by waking up and suddenly there they are/ and all I need's a starting place/ and nothing ever seemed so hard…_

(two months, three weeks, four days, and one sunlit morning)

The world changed, and then changed again, with two phone calls, on the same day.

The morning had begun like all the rest, lately: James waking up, after what little sleep he’d managed to get in the small hours of the early morning, with the ever-present headache from exhaustion, emotional and physical. Michael looking at him with concern, also ever-present, these days.

He’d woken up to find Michael gazing at him, eyes already open, like every morning; Michael’d always been the morning person that James wasn’t, but lately he’d been staying in bed and watching while James attempted to sleep. And he’d asked, also like every morning, “How’re you?”

James hadn’t been giving the _exact_ same answer each time, because that would’ve gotten boring, but he’d started running out of synonyms for “nothing’s changed” fairly quickly. So he just shrugged, this time. “I think I got some sleep, at the end.”

Michael sighed. “Can I touch you? Please?” That question happened every single morning, too.

“Yes, you can.” Ritual inquiry; ritual answer. Something comforting about the repetition. Routine. Ordinary.

Michael put an arm around him. Neither of them, for a minute, moved. The sheets tangled themselves around James’s legs, dense and warm; he kicked them off.

“Feel like getting up?”

“Um, sure…coffee?”

“Of course.”

Out in the kitchen, he made toast, while Michael started coffee. The first time he’d offered to help, the week after he’d come home, starting to feel guilty about his lack of contribution to the relationship, Michael’d stared at him and said “ _No_ ,” and under the objection had been hurt, that James didn’t want to let himself be taken care of, when Michael was offering.

He’d said, carefully because every word still scraped and stung on the way out of his throat, “I love you, and you’re doing everything for me, so please let me do something too.” He’d meant: please let me thank you, please let me be able to do something for you, please let there still be some simple thing I can remember how to do.

Michael had looked at him for a second, in silence. Smiled, or nearly. Said, slowly, “I know you know I’ve always made coffee for you, in the mornings, but, um, if you want to you can make us toast…?” and James had smiled back and started looking for their bread.

So now they always had two things, in the mornings. Coffee, and toast. Other things too, of course. But always those.

This particular morning Michael was also scrambling eggs, which he set in front of James without asking. James studied the uninvited presence on his plate, dubiously. “Really?”

“I saw how not-much chicken you ate last night. You’re lucky I’m not making you eat more.”

“It already looks unconquerable. The Mount Everest of breakfast foods.”

“People climb Mount Everest. All the time. So you should be able to eat this.”

“I don’t think that’s a perfect analogy.”

“You started it. Seriously, though, still not hungry? Or is it that your throat hurts?”

“Um…mostly the first one. It’s not a comment on your culinary skills, at all. I just—”

“Mostly?”

“Yes…but you know that, I’ve told you. It just takes a minute, in the mornings. Always scratchy, when I wake up. But I can talk to you now. Obviously.”

“Hmm.”

“The coffee helps.” It did. Soothing heat, each time he swallowed. “Did you put gingerbread syrup in this?”

“Yes?”

“I love you.” He made it about halfway through the miniature edible mountain, then gave up. “Either help me with this or use it to feed the starving children of the world.”

“Are you done already? Eat that bite. And also that one.”

“One out of two. Happy?”

“Not entirely, but good enough for now.”

“Thank you.” Michael’s answer had been half-flippant; James tried to answer the same way, because he did know that, honestly, but some stupid internal reflex made him flinch at the words, anyway. He hadn’t made Michael happy. Hadn’t done something right, or right enough. And things _happened_ , when he couldn’t do something right enough.

Ridiculous and he knew it, and because he knew it he kept the reaction all inside, where Michael wouldn’t have to be wounded by it, or disappointed. Any more so.

“…I’ll make you eat the rest of them later,” Michael was promising, which James knew from experience was not an idle threat. “What do you feel up to, today? I was thinking about going to the store; we’re out of milk, and also almost out of coffee, but if you don’t want to—”

“I can come.” They’d managed that much a few times before, successfully. He didn’t mind the exertion, or the expedition, if they timed it right; not too many people, no physical proximity, and he’d be fine. Michael could do all the talking, and all the bodily protection if that became necessary, and James could get outside the confines of their shared space for a while, and let himself be distracted by the world.

“Okay.” Michael smiled at him, through the morning peacefulness, for that. “Not yet, though. I want to shower. You could try to go back to sleep.”

“We just were asleep, you know.”

“No, _I_ was asleep. _You_ were trying to keep yourself awake all night, and then napping for an hour and pretending that was enough. Go lie down on the couch, at least.”

Michael probably hadn’t meant that to be an order, but it was. Or maybe that was only James’s own brain, hearing it as such.

He didn’t move, right away. Just tried to figure out, and process, his own reaction. All the memories didn’t help; they added to the confusion, instead.

Before…well, _before_ , he would’ve obeyed instantly. Would have looked up, and probably licked his lips because he knew Michael couldn’t help staring when he did, and moved on command, and shivered with the intimate little thrill of submission, when Michael looked at him with those expectantly authoritative eyes.

And he still wanted that, or some part of him did. The part that had always wanted that, the buried quivering that only ever quieted at those moments, Michael’s touch, Michael’s voice, accepting everything from him, taking all the tension and turning it around into release, into the sweet electric shocks of heat and pleasure and compliance. He wanted that even now.

But he had other memories, too. More recent, and older, swimming to the surface all over again. More brutal, a viciously opaque overlay of violent agony and frighteningly real helplessness. Another voice issuing orders, and laughing when he couldn’t succeed. He couldn’t do that again. Couldn’t want that.

He wasn’t even certain what he was allowed to want, now. If he was allowed to want things at all.

“James?” Michael’s voice, saying his name, echoed with concern; he blinked, and realized he’d been sitting there inside his own head for several long minutes. No wonder, about the concern. Michael probably thought he’d been tempted to disappear into silence again.

“Still here. Sorry. You were going to shower, you said?”

“I—don’t do that. Please. You scare me when you do that. And I love you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t—I don’t think I have a good sense of time, anymore. But that was just thinking, not anything else. I meant to answer you. I can go try to nap on the couch if you want. And I love you, too.”

“James…” Michael ran a hand across his face, as if rubbing something away; apprehension, perhaps, or tears, or weary anxiety. James thought about getting up and putting a hand on his shoulder—maybe that would help make the weariness go away—but couldn’t quite make himself move. Not when the purpose of that movement would be to _touch_.

He did get up, though, after a minute full of no additional words. Walked around the table, carefully, and stood there next to Michael, who looked up at him, uncertain; James tried to smile, even though the expression felt unfamiliar, underused.

Michael had been nudging his mug of coffee with one hand, fiddling with it, pushing it back and forth across the heat-scarred wood of the table; James reached out, and curled a finger through the handle, arresting the motion. The warmth spread out through the ceramic lines and connected their fingertips, shared sensation like hope, or a promise.

After a second, Michael smiled again. James smiled back, and this time the movement felt more natural. Like something true.

He did end up on the couch, curled beneath the giant fluffy indigo blanket his sister had failed to knit into any attractive shape as a housewarming present for the two of them. Little loops and odd stray ends poked out in various directions, and the edges defied rational geometry, and James had adored it at first sight, because it needed so very badly to be loved.

Michael touched the corner of the blanket, briefly, after bringing it over, and then handed him the television remote. “I still think you should try to sleep, but in case you get bored.”

“Without your sparkling presence? I think I’ll manage for the twenty minutes it’ll take you to get back out here, thanks.”

“Ten minutes. I don’t have all the hair in the world to wash.”

“You love my hair. And it loves you.”

“Yes, I know, I keep finding it all over my shirts, you could tell it to be less demonstrative,” Michael retorted, and then headed off down the hall, narrowly escaping the throw pillow James flung after him.

He didn’t fall asleep, not quite, though he did doze a little, in and out, to the reassuring splashes of the water, and the faint sound of Michael humming, which meant that Michael’d been in a good mood when getting into the shower.

Which meant that he’d done something right, maybe. With the coffee mug, or possibly something else, but he’d made Michael feel better somehow. He couldn’t help being happy, about that. The ungainly knitted blanket nestled around him happily, too. It approved.

He must’ve drifted off for a few minutes, because when the world came back into focus it was to the sound of Michael saying, no longer happily, “—no, I don’t care if you set up the meeting for today, and I don’t care if it was difficult, you know I can’t go anywhere and you know why—”

What?

He wriggled around, under the affectionate blanket. Peeked over the edge of the couch, as surreptitiously as he could.

Oh. Michael was on the phone. Still shirtless, clearly having been interrupted while getting dressed. James appreciated the view for a few seconds. Found himself slightly surprised at how much he could still appreciate the view, even if the thought of pursuing those ideas continued to make him flinch.

He’d missed a few sentences. Michael sounded irritated. “No, I don’t know how long it’s going to be, okay? As long as he needs me.”

At that, James slid back down onto the couch, and couldn’t quite breathe. He knew who that pronoun had to be referencing. He knew why.

Suddenly it crossed his mind to wonder about the _lack_ of industry-related phone calls or script deliveries or messages, up until now. Had Michael been sending everyone away?

He didn’t care about that on his own behalf, not now, not yet. But Michael’d been saying no to someone, on the phone. To a meeting. Was Michael turning down projects to take care of him?

He couldn’t ask Michael to do that. Would never have asked. But he hadn’t even thought to bring it up.

All at once the lack of air, in his chest, felt a lot more painful. Like guilt, if guilt could squeeze a heart into a pebble-sized lump of lead.

Michael’d been silently sacrificing his career, his own opportunities, to stay here with James. As long as James needed him.

He lay there with all the guilt and kept listening as the pain unfolded.

“—of course the sequel isn’t going to happen! I don’t care how much money they think it’s going to make—no, you’re not listening. Not even _that_ much money. Not unless James can do it, too, and yes, I know that could be years, or never, and I don’t fucking care if it is. And if you say that last part ever again I _will_ fire you, I swear.”

A pause. James bit his lip, to keep from crying into the blanket.

“You can tell them to be there today if you want, but don’t tell them to expect me, all right?”

Another pause. Michael sounded further away, now, possibly walking down the hall toward the bedroom. “—no. I said already. As long as he needs me. For however long he needs me. And you can—”

James, trying to hear, shifted positions. Bumped the remote with an elbow; it slithered off the couch and collided with the table on its way to the floor. Damn.

“Now you’ve _woken him up_ ,” Michael hissed, and must’ve hung up right on the heels of that unspoken threat, because when he appeared over the back of the couch the phone was nowhere in sight. “Hey. Go back to sleep, it’s fine, I’m sorry—”

“Was that your agent?”

“Um…yes?”

“You have a meeting to go to? Today?”

“No.”

“Not what I heard.”

Michael sighed. Ran a hand through his hair. “You—just don’t worry about it, okay? Please?”

“A meeting about what?”

“James…oh, come on, don’t do that, with the eyes….all right. Um. Bond.”

“What—oh my god. _Bond_. So…you have to go, then. What time?”

“No!”

“Time?”

“Two o’clock…stop looking at me like that. I can’t not answer you when you’re looking at me like that.”

“Good!”

“Please don’t make this harder.”

“I’m trying to make it easier. You should go.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“James—”

“Tell me why.”

“Because you’re—”

“What?”

“Please don’t make me say this—”

“I’m what? Weak? Pitiful, maybe? Broken? Dependent on you? Some sort of tragically suffering victim—”

“You are!”

They both stopped talking, then. Around them, the moment turned as brittle, and as clear, as glass. Inside it, they stared at each other.

 

James looked away first, eyes falling to the unresponsive floor; and Michael felt something tiny and sharp bite into his heart, at the gesture of defeat.

“James—I didn’t mean—you know I don’t think—”

“ _Is_ that what you think?” James didn’t look up. And that once-luscious voice sounded very small, engulfed by all the sudden quiet. “I mean, I know I—I haven’t been—I’m sorry about that, that I’m not the person you fell in love with, I do know that, you know—”

“James, no—”

“—but I am trying. I swear I’m trying. I want to be—I want us to be all right. Normal. So you should go. To your meeting.”

“James,” Michael said again, and realized, abruptly, that he was one desperate word, one syllable, one breath away from tears, “I’m sorry. Please don’t say—you can’t think that about yourself, you _can’t_ , I do love you, and I know you’re trying, I do, of course I know that. I’m sorry again, and I love you no matter what, please tell me you know that, please look at me, please.” And then bit his lip, hard enough to hold back the threatening flood.

James licked his lips, a small nervous swipe of tongue over pink skin. Studied the heavy rug, the one they’d bought to cover up cold spots on the floor, as if it might be able to explain Michael’s words to him, as if they’d come out in some foreign language, lost without a translation. The pale grey fabric refused any aid; James shifted his weight, dug minuscule hollows into the luxurious weave with his toes.

James was still barefoot, Michael thought, and somehow that last little vulnerability, exposed skin peeking out from too-long pajama pants, seared all-new bruises into his aching heart. Made him want to fall on his knees, there on the placid expanse of the rug, and beg for James’s forgiveness. To say anything James wanted to hear. Anything at all.

James looked up, then. With eyes like drowned sapphires, so unfathomably blue that Michael couldn’t speak, or move, when they found his. “I love you, too. I always will. And I believe you when you say you love me. I still think you should go.”

“You think I should _go_ —”

“Just to your meeting.” James smiled at him, a bit crookedly; the warmth reached up into the ocean-tide gaze, too. Didn’t banish all the shadows, not quite, but it tried. “I want you to come back, after. To come home.”

Home. Did James mean that? Did he mean it the same way Michael meant it, the way that Michael wanted him to mean it, too? Home, for the two of them. A safe space. A refuge.

Beyond the open windows, clouds drifted over the sun, and then skittered away again, leaving no traces behind. No scars, not out there in the sky. Could James still believe in safety? In the possibility of refuge?

James was standing very close to him, beside the uncaringly neutral couch. Both of them on their feet, inches apart. That ludicrous ungainly blanket lay puddled in a forlorn purple coil on the ground. And the rich spiced scent of the morning’s gingerbread-flavored coffee lingered, hanging in the air.

He took a deep breath. Held out one hand, very carefully, asking the question. One more time. Ritual. Routine. The pieces of their lives. “Can I touch you?”

The smile got a little broader, the force of sunbeams behind it; James reached out, too, and set his hand in Michael’s. Even squeezed, once, which Michael hadn’t been expecting. “Yes. If you want to.”

“I do.” He squeezed back. Lifted eyebrows, inquiring, or hopefully so: _more?_ And James, who _was_ perfect, always, stepped closer to him, removing the distance between them. Accepted the embrace, when Michael’s arms folded around him. They stood there, amid all the hard-won serenity, while the sun shone.

After a minute James said, into his shoulder, “Not until two, you said?”

“Yes…”

“Then we have a few hours. Did you still want to go to the store? I mean both of us. I can come.”

“Are you sure? Also, I love you.”

“Um…yes. I think I’m fine leaving the house, these days. And you’ll be there. Both of those things are probably good for me. And I love you, too. Of course.”

“I know you do. I’m a thing?”

“At least I called you a _good_ thing.”  James was holding him, as well; freckled arms, wrapped around his waist, left lines of heat, even through his hastily-pulled-on shirt. He’d not wanted to worry James with blatantly uncovered skin, in the wake of his realization that he’d woken James up. He’d been trying not to make any of those sorts of demands.

James moved the arms, not a big change, only a slight alteration of position, and didn’t let go. That sensation, the warmth of James holding him, would be branded into his body forever, memory soaking through skin and bone and blood, changing him from the inside out. Something approaching happiness, maybe, he thought: James wanted to hold him.

“If you say so. I can be a good thing, if you say I am.” He hoped. “Shopping, then? Because you do need coffee. I’ve seen you in the mornings without it. And after…”

“You’re my favorite thing. Coffee _is_ a necessity, and you aren’t allowed to mock me, not when you drink it too. And after, you can go to your meeting.”

“You’re deciding that one for me, aren’t you.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I don’t want you to leave me alone. But we have to try it sometime. And that might as well be now.” James looked up at him. The sky-colored eyes caught, and held, the light, streaking through them like tears. “You can feed me more of your colossal mountain of eggs, though, before you leave, all right? And I won’t even complain when you make me fat.”

“You’re not fat.” Too thin, in fact. So breakable, in his arms. “And now you’ve said it, so I’m holding you to that. Or—are you hungry now? Because I could—”

“Not yet. I didn’t mean immediately. You know…you don’t _have_ to do things immediately. Just because I say them.”

“James…I want to do things for you. I want to take care of you. Immediately. Any time. Always. Whatever might make this—the other things, the not-good things—easier. You know that, right?”

And James breathed out, softly. Put his head on Michael’s shoulder, hair wandering up to coil around the closest of Michael’s ears. Murmured, the words brushing velvet-warm against Michael’s neck, “I know.”

They did end up at the store, arriving in the midst of surprisingly chilly air, frigid despite the pale sunlight. Clouds meandered in and out, overhead. Indecisive. The world remaining sympathetically unsettled. Michael wished it wouldn’t, though he knew the universe meant well.

The expedition might, he thought, have even been a success, or close to one. Even though James stayed very quiet, pointing at items—Michael’d said, amused, “macadamia-nut flavored coffee, seriously?” and James’d grinned, shrugged, and then widened blue eyes at him, exaggeratedly plaintive, and Michael’d started laughing out loud in the middle of the beverage aisle—and resting a hand on his arm, occasionally, when they got just a bit too close to other patrons.

He’d nearly punched a myopic middle-aged woman when they’d been looking at cereal. She’d walked stealthily right up behind James, who’d been waving a hand at something incredibly unhealthy involving marshmallows and chocolate, and she’d _reached around James_ to pick up a box. Had brushed his shoulder, along the way.

Michael’d spun around and glared, and she’d turned rewardingly pale and slunk away, murmuring apologies. James, shaking, had backed up into the boxes of Cheerios, and still somehow managed to nod at her in acceptance, and Michael’d breathed his own apologies frantically into the chilly grocery-store air and held out his hands, and James had stopped trembling at the unanticipated touch and had set one hand in Michael’s and had even leaned against him, momentarily, enough to spark some tiny conflagrations of reassurance in Michael’s chest.

Better, he’d thought. Not really better, of course not, not when the smallest unforeseen physical contact could have such devastating consequences. But at least James had held his hand.

James wasn’t talking, much. He had to ask, after they got home, in between putting boxes of cereal on sturdy shelves, chocolate next to the whole grain box because Michael couldn’t say no but he could make sure that James at least ate both.

“James?”

James paused, coffee creamer in hand, and waited, eyebrows lifted.

“Is your throat bothering you?”

A tiny sigh; James studied the creamer, for a second, and then put it down on the counter. “Maybe a little. From earlier. Not that bad.”

“Too much talking?” And now he was feeling guilty about the argument for another reason, too.

James managed to shrug with his eyebrows, this time. Michael never had quite figured out how he did that. Wanted to kiss him, every time. Had been able to, once, in another lifetime. “It’s fine.”

“It isn’t. I’m sorry.”

“It honestly is. And you don’t need to apologize. I know you don’t like me being…too quiet. But it’s not about—no, never mind. I can talk more if you want.”

Michael hesitated. He wanted to ask, wanted to know the rest of that unspoken sentence— _it’s not about what?—_ but James’d admitted to being in a little pain, which meant a lot of pain, and Michael bit his lip, hard, pushing away the query. For now. “I don’t want you to talk if you’re hurting. I do want you to be comfortable. If I tell you to go rest and let me finish this, you won’t listen, will you?”

“No. But you can make me coffee, after we get done. That usually helps.”

“Because the warmth feels good, you said.” He saw the flicker of a smile, James recognizing his own words from earlier. “I will, then. Of course. And also I’m feeding you again. You said I could.”

James sighed, shook his head, amused, resigned, affectionate; and went back to excavating grocery-store bags, taking items out and putting them away. Stayed quiet, despite another genuine small smile, over food and the heat of gingerbread coffee and cream.

Michael almost asked, again, then, at that expression. Didn’t, because James still wasn’t eating much and he didn’t want to interrupt what bites were being taken.

At least, he thought, and clung to the thought, this wasn’t the most terrifying kind of quiet, the unsettling drops into faraway reverie, silences at wrong times or for too long or in answer to theoretically easy questions. The quiet where Michael couldn’t follow, signs he didn’t know how to read. Those gates were barred against his—against anyone’s—entry. He felt the clang of the iron, every time he uttered a sentence and blue eyes looked into elsewhere instead of his.

But this wasn’t that. Or at least he didn’t think so. James focused on him when Michael said his name, and brushed possibly-imaginary lint from his shoulder when Michael wandered out of the bathroom wearing a marginally nicer shirt than the one he’d gone in with.

He’d not wanted to change in front of James. Too much bare skin. Might’ve felt like too unwelcome a reminder.

James smiled at him a touch more widely, when he emerged, but didn’t speak. Michael didn’t ask him to, this time. He knew that words might burn. Especially unprompted, unexpected. The moments when anyone else might clear a throat, or cough, to open airways.

So he smiled back, and bit into oblivion all the unvoiced questions— _will you be all right? should I really leave you? what will you do while I’m gone? why do you feel so sad, when I touch your hand?_ —and he went to the damn meeting. Because James wanted him to go.


End file.
